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> Capitalists, funny to say, go to extraordinary lengths to protect their very expensive capital. They want safe nuclear power more than anyone. Are you seriou

> Capitalists, funny to say, go to extraordinary lengths to protect their very expensive capital. They want safe nuclear power more than anyone. Are you serious? The price of the reactor is an insubstantial part of the potential cost of a nuclear accident.

roenxi 7y ago
> Are you serious? The price of the reactor is an insubstantial part of the potential cost of a nuclear accident. I don't really follow your complaint. Yes. I don't see how the cost of the accident is relevant to the incentives a plant operator works under; the odds of an accident are lower than the odds of being hit by a car (and the effects of a car impact are worse, because someone/several somebodies will likely be dead instead of mass inconvenience as is typical in the capitalist half of all nuclear accidents). So that isn't a major risk as the engineers see it and probably won't affect any individuals behavior as much as the fact that if someone owns an expensive thing they look after it because they are not stupid. If someone owns an asset that cost >$100 million dollars to obtain they are not going to skimp on maintenance costs in a way that risks it breaking down. Owners who can afford to buy infrastructure are going to keep it in good condition. If you think it is worth owning something that expensive then it is worth keeping it maintained. Capitalists have a lot of problems, but they are good at maintaining capital. The idea that capitalism can't maintain capital is absurd - what type of capitalist lets their capital decay? They would cease to be capitalist by virtue of having no capital. Doing a good job of maintaining capital is one of the core tenants of capitalism as practiced. The idea that capitalism will "makes the safest nuclear power plant unsafe" is so wrong that it just needs to be called out. Nuclear is a great example of this because - as mentioned - under capitalism the disasters have been much tamer and required more to trigger them than under an alternative system such as communism.
- firethief 7y ago
  > Yes. I don't see how the cost of the accident is relevant to the incentives a plant operator works under That was my point
  - roenxi 7y ago
    Why do you think that would change under any other system besides capitalism? The incentives don't get any better if you get rid of the plant owner and have someone else in charge.
- cheerlessbog 7y ago
  > Doing a good job of maintaining capital is one of the core tenants of capitalism as practiced. Even if you assume they are rational actors with complete information, it may be rationally in their interests to double their profit in exchange for doubling their risk. Capitalists balance risk against profit all the time. Also their liability only extends to their own capital. A risk of losing twice as much is rationally no less attractive. The excess cost is borne by the community who has to clean up.
  - roenxi 7y ago
    If the plant melts down you lose the plant and the income stream. Since the plant costs multi-millions, it would almost always be more sensible to sell the plant to someone who wants to keep it for the long term. Even running capital down purposefully is a pretty desperate strategy when every other possible option has been closed off. Letting it fail in an uncontrolled and expensive manner when you could just hire a capable full time maintenance team is just a no brainer of a decision - you hire enough engineers to understand what it is doing and you keep control of the situation. That will equal or beat the safety performance of any other system you care to think of. So what if they aren't bearing the full cost of the disaster? The incentives are still pretty much all in the direction of keeping the plant in good condition, and direction matters more than magnitude for incentives. The costs are unimaginable once they get past a couple of million anyway. Engineering perspective, I think the official guidance on a human life is ~$10 million for cost/benefit analysis, and I'd be pretty motivated well before that to do the right thing. This isn't a radical idea; the only time I've seen something that expensive be run down is when the government (or other political forces, I suppose) is somehow mandating a shutdown. I've seen a lot more examples of extremely well maintained bits of kit, and I've seen a lot of very expensive machines that still cost nowhere near as much as a power plant. I know engineers who work in coal power plants too, they are not risk takers in any sense. We've oodles of evidence on this one; the costs are high enough that capitalists will keep the thing maintained at least as well as any other system you care to name. No system is perfect, but there isn't going to be one more systemically capable of maintaining capital than capitalism.
    - cheerlessbog 7y ago

roenxi 7y ago

> Are you serious? The price of the reactor is an insubstantial part of the potential cost of a nuclear accident. I don't really follow your complaint. Yes. I don't see how the cost of the accident is relevant to the incentives a plant operator works under; the odds of an accident are lower than the odds of being hit by a car (and the effects of a car impact are worse, because someone/several somebodies will likely be dead instead of mass inconvenience as is typical in the capitalist half of all nuclear accidents). So that isn't a major risk as the engineers see it and probably won't affect any individuals behavior as much as the fact that if someone owns an expensive thing they look after it because they are not stupid. If someone owns an asset that cost >$100 million dollars to obtain they are not going to skimp on maintenance costs in a way that risks it breaking down. Owners who can afford to buy infrastructure are going to keep it in good condition. If you think it is worth owning something that expensive then it is worth keeping it maintained. Capitalists have a lot of problems, but they are good at maintaining capital. The idea that capitalism can't maintain capital is absurd - what type of capitalist lets their capital decay? They would cease to be capitalist by virtue of having no capital. Doing a good job of maintaining capital is one of the core tenants of capitalism as practiced. The idea that capitalism will "makes the safest nuclear power plant unsafe" is so wrong that it just needs to be called out. Nuclear is a great example of this because - as mentioned - under capitalism the disasters have been much tamer and required more to trigger them than under an alternative system such as communism.

firethief 7y ago
> Yes. I don't see how the cost of the accident is relevant to the incentives a plant operator works under That was my point
- roenxi 7y ago
  Why do you think that would change under any other system besides capitalism? The incentives don't get any better if you get rid of the plant owner and have someone else in charge.
cheerlessbog 7y ago
> Doing a good job of maintaining capital is one of the core tenants of capitalism as practiced. Even if you assume they are rational actors with complete information, it may be rationally in their interests to double their profit in exchange for doubling their risk. Capitalists balance risk against profit all the time. Also their liability only extends to their own capital. A risk of losing twice as much is rationally no less attractive. The excess cost is borne by the community who has to clean up.
- roenxi 7y ago
  If the plant melts down you lose the plant and the income stream. Since the plant costs multi-millions, it would almost always be more sensible to sell the plant to someone who wants to keep it for the long term. Even running capital down purposefully is a pretty desperate strategy when every other possible option has been closed off. Letting it fail in an uncontrolled and expensive manner when you could just hire a capable full time maintenance team is just a no brainer of a decision - you hire enough engineers to understand what it is doing and you keep control of the situation. That will equal or beat the safety performance of any other system you care to think of. So what if they aren't bearing the full cost of the disaster? The incentives are still pretty much all in the direction of keeping the plant in good condition, and direction matters more than magnitude for incentives. The costs are unimaginable once they get past a couple of million anyway. Engineering perspective, I think the official guidance on a human life is ~$10 million for cost/benefit analysis, and I'd be pretty motivated well before that to do the right thing. This isn't a radical idea; the only time I've seen something that expensive be run down is when the government (or other political forces, I suppose) is somehow mandating a shutdown. I've seen a lot more examples of extremely well maintained bits of kit, and I've seen a lot of very expensive machines that still cost nowhere near as much as a power plant. I know engineers who work in coal power plants too, they are not risk takers in any sense. We've oodles of evidence on this one; the costs are high enough that capitalists will keep the thing maintained at least as well as any other system you care to name. No system is perfect, but there isn't going to be one more systemically capable of maintaining capital than capitalism.
  - cheerlessbog 7y ago